Playboy has published profiles of nine women bloggers (loosely defined) - Xeni Jardin, Violet Blue, Julie Alexandria, Veronica Belmont, Amanda Congdon, Brigitte Dale, Sarah Lacy, Sarah Austin and Natali Del Conte - and asked readers to vote on which one is “sexiest.” The winner will be asked to pose for Playboy.
Sarah Lacy, host of Yahoo’s TechTicker, is described respectfully as a “curvy brunette.” Lacy says that Playboy told her about the poll before it was published but said nothing about their plans to ask the winner to pose nude for the magazine. Lacy says if she wins she won’t accept the offer to go nude.
Natali Del Conte, the host of CNET’s Loaded (and former TechCrunch writer), currently leads voting with 24% of total votes, says she was notified of the poll and gave permission to use her picture. She says if she wins she will “absolutely not pose nude for Playboy,” however. Playboy describes Natali as having a “sunshiney demeanor and girl-next-door good looks.”
I’d like to say contests like these are few and far between, but Wired isn’t much better. In 2007 they asked readers to vote for the sexiest geek of 2007 (not linking to it because the Wired article hotlinked to pictures, one of which has been changed to a goatse).
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Is it just me or is facebook.com down again?
Don’t worry -> Its back online.
Morgan Webb and Olivia Munn whipped cream spread ++
It would be the best selling playboy of ALL TIME.
I guarantee it.
Oh, what about video blogging. That little british babe that does the feed on AOTS, she would be smokin’ !
http://images.google.com/image.....20Kayleigh
And now you’ve just … been …. fed.
That would rule. Playboy, I hope you’re reading!!!
It would be easy to blame Playboy for such distasteful coverage (ahem) of the female blog community, but the tech community itself is equally to blame. Our blithe acceptance of porn (just look at the comment section of any geek site) and a tendency to slide into a narcissistic, crass cultural pool (*cough*YouTube/MySpace*cough*) has allowed this kind of devaluing of sexual dignity and dare I say chastity to infiltrate the broader “interweb”. If there’s any one step backward here, it’s not Playboy, it’s the juvenile tech culture that’s been encouraging such behavior.
what?? no Huffington? that list is BOGUS man.
WHAT! I didn’t make the list??? What the H E double hockey sticks???? I should totally be up there.
I heard Facebook was down again.
“One Step Backward”
Why is that one step backward, because some @nal overeducated PHDs at Microsoft R&D disapprove of it?
Most women would kill to be in Playboy. Get real with the feigned disgust.
Won’t say her name, but she used to do Rocketboom!
Facebook is working.
Just yesterday Bloggers we want to see in bikinis was published on Urlesque.
All of these women are incredibly intelligent and good at what they do, but the immaturity of the tech industry seems to always want to reduce a female to their looks.
I agree with Jared that while it’s easy to blame Playboy, there is more blame to place on an industry that still treats women like foreigners.
How depressing.
And this is one reason why more girls don’t go into the technology field. Because of a bunch of guys who couldn’t get dates in high school are overly obsessed with boobies even as adults.
Since you were all looking for it, here’s the goatse’d Wired article Michael mentioned (NSFW, obviously)
http://www.wired.com/culture/l.....sexy_geeks
@9 I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. This is a HUGE step back for women in this community. The *last* thing they need is to have geek guys everywhere thinking of them because of their T&A and not because of their competency.
That said, I’d like to see Sarah Lacy humiliated some more.
How very sad. It couldn’t be about the content of their words, but their appearance. Thanks for diminishing half the race of the planet.
and my vote is for Amanda Congdon - always had mad crush on her
@16
http://www.myspace.com/omunn
Olivia has 86453 friends.
“The *last* thing they need is to have geek guys everywhere thinking of them because of their T&A and not because of their competency.”
I think denying men’s basic attraction to women whether they’re bloggers or lunch ladies in the name of highfalutinism is a step back. It’s that kind of repressiveness that made playboy so popular in the first place. That’s my opinion.
@10 is talking about Amanda Congdon.
http://images.google.com/image.....da+Congdon
I don’t think she’s that hot.
You have to know that if Playboy went out on a limb like this they probably already contacted the bloggers and made sure they would be into it if they were selected.
Otherwise they would just look foolish once winners were selected. That’s probably why Huffington isn’t on the list.
Pah, let them have their fun. One should think that these women wouldn’t /actually/ pose nude in Playboy (at least not judging from the comments of the people written about here), so it’s not like it’s omg so disrespectful. While I certainly don’t think people should be judged by their looks, I think that the only reason these people get into these kinds of polls are because they’ve already gotten famous by their talents and intelligence, and if anything it’s a compliment that people out there find them attractive.
As a girl, and a self-proclaimed nerd, I think this is pretty harmless fun. I would be quite unhappy, however, if it started becoming a really serious issue of discrimination, but that’s not the impression I’m getting right now.
I second “A Cowboy’s Wife”! Geesh, what kind of a list is this thing LOL
j/k
Why is the hot MILF always forgotten
“Chris” — great observation, that’s typically how they do it, I wonder what women of integrity would have been on the list
Maria
i don’t see what’s disrespectful here. not only these girls are brilliant on what they do and highly recognized among the geek community, now they are getting recognition for being pretty as well. c’mon, this is something that very few people can claim (this applies to guys too)
in the end of the day playboy get some buzz (are they still alive?), these girls get even more publicity, the winner will pretend to be embaressed and will say no, and life will move on.
IMHO there are much worse offenses and discriminations out there. let the girls enjoy their moment, and playboy to think they’re getting a free ride
Oh come on. Everyone knows these chicks are famous merely because of their looks. None of the chicks listed actually have any technical chops… They’re just reporters riding their good looks in a field dominated by men.
zm puts it a bit bluntly, and I’m not convinced the popular women in this field are famous “merely because of their looks” but it is intriguing that of the women in this field, they’re universally somewhat above the mean in terms of looks. I wonder why that is, because the men certainly aren’t.
Honey, none of those dames could compare to seeing * Miss UNIVERSE in the birthday suit.
NO comparison!
i agree with zm
i think porn maybe better career for them
I votez to see Michelle Arrington nekkid. Girl is hot.
Now this is very interesting news. The power of money, they might say they wont do the photo shoot but they still haven’t told them how much are they going to pay them.
All y’all need to lighten up. We are all sexual beings, whether we’re bloggers, engineers, swimsuit models, etc. Sex and sexuality are part of our lives, but unfortunately, we live in a society where it’s not actually acceptable to admit that, despite its pervasiveness. If anyone thinks the way these bloggers look doesn’t have anything to do with their success, you’re nuts. If two women, or men, one incredibly attractive and one normal, wrote the exact same blogs, the ones by the attractive bloggers would be more widely read. It’s not only the way the world works, but it’s the way both men and women are programmed.
Line, hook, and sinker.
Don’t think that these bloggers weren’t flattered to be included… as indicated, all knew about it and were informed. Haven’t heard anyone complaining about the audacity of Playboy for doing this or being asked to do it.
Old media sweats. leers, clutches its chest, and collapses, dripping bile from its cyanotic lips..
@Alaska: Having been fishing too much the last few weeks, I’d think you meant, “hook, line, sinker”. But I know you’re smart, so I missed it completely. Help me out here…
Where’s Julia Allison? She’s a cutey
Why would you draw attention to this? Ignore it, don’t advertise it…
One might ask why you did not ignore this, Blaise?
O GAWD. maybe i’ll write a top ten list of guys in the tech industry who need to get laid. any suggestions?
After having to fight my way in with the “boys” to be taken seriously as a web developer (and it took 5-6 years to just get paid close to the same as though in my same experience level), this kind of crap makes me sick to my stomach.
Well… I would get all fired up about it - except that honestly, as a 99.99% heterosexual old married woman - I’d rather see most of those women unclad than most of the male bloggers I know.
Honestly - it’s Playboy. They do it with every freaking profession from school teacher to firefighter to tech to… well you get the point. It’s how Hef affords that nice mansion of his.
It’s not like we expect anything different from Playboy, do we?
Tempest in a Teapot.
It would be great to see a hottie like Natali pose nude. Note that posing for playboy should not be confused with being a playboy playmate, which I think would be a career kill for someone like Natali. Playmates are pretty much high class whores.
Aside from the “posing nude” but. Why is this any different from the Bloggie award categories that hilight the same thing?
slow news week, eh? Geek Mommy’s right. It’s Playboy, it’s what they do. Silly thing to be upset about.
How could we not include Amber Mac? She should be the one!
“The one step backward crowd” is full of crap. The only difference between the contest and that opinion an admission that you like to see women naked.
Now let’s have a conversation about the number of steps forward images of naked women have pushed these tubes as we know them.
Google is up.
no question they would bare it all if playboy offered enough money.
I think the only reason Arrington even posted on this is that he’s jealous that nobody wants to see his boobies.
@Frank Church
I have dyslexia
“Playboy has published profiles of nine women bloggers (loosely defined)”
hmm
loosely defined as bloggers or loosely defined as women?
*******
Isn’t is a bit ironic that the first two mentioned are Ms Jardin and Ms Blue, given their falling out and the recent contretemps.
I have to admit to being _stunned_ that Xeni Jardin is now in second place in the poll. [11:00 EDT 07.09.08]
I will certainly grant that she is utterly striking looking. As striking as a mayan speaking alien could ever dream to be.
But of course taste in these matters is entirely subjective.
Playboy is so desperate to get “into the web 2.0″ … its sad. They are seeing a future in which the porn magazines are even more outdated that regular magazines. I was at a meeting at an ad agency recently brainstorming some pitches for them. Desperate.
Shut up, you don’t fish. It’s cool. You dyslexic fuck
Why is Sarah Lacy getting no love? You’re tops with me, babe.